Saturday, June 2, 2007

On palimpsests and interpenetrations

Hmmm, yet another of my blogs, they seem to multiply...

This one is devoted to the "seepage" between worlds. The most serious interpenetration I'm currently involved in is the relationship between Second Life and so-called "Real Life", but I am also interested in interpenetrations between the sciences and the arts, between cultures, genders, age groups and other contexts.

"palimpsests and interpenetrations" is organized by a single person but with multiple identities. Hence "geoffrey edwards" is my real life moniker, the name by which I am known professionally and socially. However, "magellan egoyan" is my primary Second Life avatar, and has a distinct and separate identity, although "mag" is still "me"! Later, I expect other interpenetrations to occur.

If the title of this blog is viewed as having slightly sexual overtones, this is not entirely happenstance. Indeed the word "palimpsests" has slight echoes of "priapus" while "interpenetrations" quite clearly may be used to refer to the sexual act. Sex itself is a form of interpetration, a "leakage" between our relationship to mother and father, on the one hand, as children, and our sense of "fusion", "infusion" and often "confusion" with regard to significant others.

1 comment:

Jonathon Neville said...

I'm missing some of the meaning in your blog title. I appreciate interpenetrations; why palimpsests?

(I know a palimpsest is "a manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible".)

Thanks